Get Ready For "Glee" Guest Stars, Romance and a Talent Search

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After launching the careers of several young, talented, relative unknowns, Fox has announced a talent search for aspiring "Glee" stars, ages 16 to 26, to fill three new roles in the show's newly announced second season. The search will be documented in a multi-part reality special, culminating in the unveiling of the new cast members on the show's second season premiere this fall.

“We were going to do a nationwide search regardless,” Fox president Kevin Reillytold reporters Monday, revealing that some of the original cast, like Chris Colfer who plays fabulously fashionable, outed teen Kurt Hummel, were discovered that way. "We decided to let the audience in as a part of that. There will not be formal voting. The audience will not decide, but the audience will certainly participate. They will give us their opinions on who they want and who they like."

New cast members are great, but what will happen with the storylines Gleeks have been salivating over for months? Now that choir director Will (Matthew Morrison) and OCD guidance counselor Emma (Jayma Mays) have shared their first kiss, will their romance be game-on?

Nope, says Mays. "[Series creator] Ryan Murphy said that it's his job as a writer to keep us apart. I was like, ‘Actually, you know what? That's right and that makes sense.’ Otherwise people won't have anything to root for. Emma's a smart girl and she's a practical girl, and so she wouldn't jump into a relationship with a man that's technically not even separated."

Sigh. Well, it took McDreamy and Meredith almost five seasons to finally make it work, Sam and Diane kept their on-again-off-again relationship going through eleven seasons, and Felicity and Ben didn't fully commit until the last minute of the last episode of J.J. Abrams’ first series.

Providing welcome distraction from the stunted romance between Will and Emma will be a flurry of glittering guest stars, including the return of Kristin Chenoweth as a boozy former glee club star, an appearance by Olivia Newton-John, who will perform a duet of "Let's Get Physical" with the suddenly-ubiquitous Jane Lynch, and the introduction of a new character played by Broadway star Idina Menzel. Will Menzel be playing the birth mother of Rachel (Lea Michele), who she bears a striking resemblance to in both visage and voice? According to insiders, no. All they promise it that "It's going to be interesting."